Disability and the Victorians

Iain Hutchison is Research Affiliate in Economic & Social History at the University of GlasgowMartin Atherton is Retired Course Leader for British Sign Language and Deaf Studies at the University of Central LancashireJaipreet Virdi is Assistant Professor in History at the University of Delaware

Disability and the Victorians investigates the attitudes of Victorians towards people with impairments, illustrates how these influenced the interventions they introduced to support such people and considers the legacies they left behind by their actions and perspectives. A range of impairments are addressed in a variety of contexts.

Foreword - Karen SayerIntroduction - Iain Hutchison, Martin Atherton and Jaipreet VirdiPart I: Attitudes1 Restoration to usefulness: Victorian middle-class attitudes towards the healthcare of the working poor - Amy W Farnbach Pearson2 Imperial lives - confronting the legacies of empire, disability and the Victorians - Esme Cleall3 Disabling the author in Mid-Victorian realist fiction: case studies of George Eliot and Harriet Martineau - Deborah M FratzPart II: Interventions4 Medicalising deafness in Victorian London: the Royal Ear Hospital, 1816-1916 - Jaipreet Virdi5 Drunkenness, degeneration, and disability in England - Joanne Woiak6 Victorian medical awareness of childhood language disabilities - Paula Hellal and Marjorie Lorch7 'Happiness and usefulness increased": Consuming ability in the antebellum artificial limb market - Caroline LieffersPart III: Legacies8 The disabled child in an industrial metropolis: Glasgow's children's hospital, Scottish convalescent homes 'in the country', and east park home for infirm children - Iain Hutchison9 The panopticon: Towards an intimate history of special schools for the blind - Fred Reid10 Allowed to be idle: Perpetuating Victorian attitudes to deafness and employability in United Kingdom social policy - Martin AthertonIndex